NVIDIA Tegra-Powered Model S Racking Up Car-of-the-Year Titles

Call it the world’s largest tablet computer. And boy is it fun to drive.

Just ask the editors of Motor Trend, which just became the latest automotive publication to name the NVIDIA-powered Tesla Model S its car of the year. This week’s award follows similar honors earlier this month from the editors of Automobile Magazine.

We can’t claim credit for the car’s grippy handling or the nearly instantaneous acceleration provided by Tesla’s electric motor. And, let’s face it, these are the qualities that help win awards from automobile magazines.

“[A]ll judges were impressed with the Tesla’s unique user interface, courtesy of the giant touch screen in the center of the car that controls everything from the air-conditioning to the nav system to the sound system to the car’s steering, suspension, and brake regeneration settings. The system means the Model S interior is virtually button-free, and the car has been effectively future-proofed: More functionality is only a software update away.”

“An absolutely enormous, seventeen-inch touchscreen dominates the dashboard and features the controls for everything from the radio to the steering effort. That sounds like a recipe for disaster, but here it works wonderfully. Oh, yeah, and you can surf the Web on it, as well. “We turned a lot of preconceived notions on their head and said, ‘Why does it have to be that way?'” says Tesla lead designer Franz von Holzhausen. Of course, practically every new car claims to be revolutionary. But this one actually feels like it is, to the point that many of us were reaching outside the automotive lexicon to describe it.”

Clearly, Tesla Motors has built a great car, and they’re just getting started. In the third quarter of 2012, Tesla built 350 Model S vehicles in its Fremont, Calif., factory. In the fourth quarter, it plans to build more than 2,500. And that’s just the beginning. As more of these super electric vehicles hit the road, Tesla is planning to build a network of charging stations across the United States. The company also plans to build approximately 50 retail stores over the next several years.

What’s more, the Model X — a crossover vehicle based on the Model S — will begin production in 2014. We can hardly wait to see how many more awards these NVIDIA-powered super-cars will win.

I think everyone around my age fell in love with Atari in the early 80s. The idea of the first “Easter Egg” in Adventure was mysterious and pseudo-underground and I was hooked.
Nowadays, the mosters tend to be 25 man World of Warcraft raids in Pandaria, but I do still have incredible respect for those monsters that were no more than floating “ducks”/dragons on my Atari.

A must mention has to be the Rogue/Hack/Nethack family of games which dominated my 8th grade life .
The computer lab, not saying a lot back then was stuffed to the gills every morning an hour before school and invariably, young guys played Rogue or Flight Simulator or Ancient Art of War on the 40 or so IBM ATs.

Thanks fo rthe article, good memories of those early days.

Shabaz Draey

I have been a gamer since the early 2000’s with both the Nintendo 64 but mostly the PlayStation. My Favorite games on the PS, was Oddworld, vigilante, Army Men, and many more. Then came the Xbox, which dammnnnn games like Halo combat evolved was just crazyyyyy. Then the 360 came with all the games that would fly in it was just crazy. Aside all of that I had the PC, my first PC was a Pentium 2, and when I got my hands on the Dual Core, my first Ge-force card was the GT 8500 😀 which was just great for its time. And nowadays it’s just and only the PC, sold all the others, kept the PS1 for some reason though, I own an i7 PC and play every game I want with the GTX 570 that I have :DD I just ordered the 660ti, and I must receive it in a couple of weeks. Which I can’t waaait, the physics I just need to seeeeeeee *_*

I so badly want to work for Nvidia as a gamer or intern, damn it would be a dream come true 🙁